Bite Me

the rats—make an appearance at home for the parents, so as to throw them off the trail of his non-toiling, loft-living, Anglo-girlfriend lifestyle.
    “You can stay here, then,” Foo said. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
    “What about them?” Jared nodded toward the bronzed figures of Jody and Tommy.
    “What about them?”
    “Can I talk to them? I didn’t get to finish telling Jody my novel.” Jared had spent a very long night telling Jodythe first part of the novel he was going to write, an erotic horror story that starred himself and his pet rat, Lucifer 2.
    “Okay,” said Foo. He didn’t really like thinking about the two people, well, vampires, but they seemed a lot like people, that he’d helped imprison in a bronze shell. It sort of gave him the willies, and that was highly unscientific. “But no touching,” he added.
    Jared pouted and sat down on the futon, about the only spot in the entire living-room-kitchen area not covered with plastic rat cages. “Okay, but will you help me get these boots off before you go?”
    Foo shuddered. It had been less than an hour since the cops led Abby away and already he missed her like a severed limb. It was embarrassing. How could hormones and hydrostatic pressure make you feel like this? Love was very unscientific.
    “Sorry,” Foo said. “Gotta jet.” A true hero, the kind Abby accused him of being, he knew, would have helped Jared.
    JARED
    Abby Normal had once offered to pay for a tattoo for Jared that read: Danger. Do not administer caffeine without adult supervision.
    Jared asked, “Can it be in red? Does it have to be on the forehead? Maybe on the side so I can grow my hair over it if I don’t like it. Am I being emo? Do you want to play Blood-feast on Xbox? They have green fur iPod cases at Urban Outfitters. I love white chocolate mochas. Marilyn Manson needs to be dragged to death behind a clown car. Oh fuck, I’m so allergic to this eyeliner I could cry.”
    Abby said, “Oh my God, you’re like Obnoxious and Annoying had an ass baby!”
    “What are you trying to say?” asked Jared.
    What she had been trying to say, although she didn’t know it at the time, was that under no circumstances should Jared be left alone in an apartment with an abundance of time and espresso, which is what Foo had just done. So after feeding, watering, and naming all the rats (most given French names from Abby’s copy of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal ), Jared began brewing espressos and was nine demitasse cups into the afternoon when he decided to act out the remainder of his unwritten vampire adventure novel, The Dark of Darkness, for a hundred rats caged in plastic and two vampires encased in bronze.
    “So the evil Blood Queen dons her chrome strap-on of death and goes after Lucifer 2. But Jared Whitewolf is on her like a fat kid on a cupcake, parrying her blows with his dagger of death, or Dee Dee, as it is known.” Jared pirouetted, a move he’d learned in ballet class at age six, and slashed the air, low and fast, with the double-edged dagger held backhand so as to sever his imaginary enemy’s femoral artery, a move he’d learned in Soul Assassin Five on the Xbox (although it was harder to do while wearing platform boots than it was in the video game). The dagger was realenough, twelve inches of double-edged high-carbon stainless steel with a dragon hilt. Jared carried it because he thought it made him look badass when doormen took it away from him at clubs.
    “And he strikes her weapon in half!” he said, leaping and bringing the blade around a little too fast. He turned his ankle, lost his balance, and as he fell, the dagger put a deep nick in the bronze statue.
    “Ow!” He sat on the floor holding his ankle and rocking back and forth in the yoga position known as the “freaked-out half-lotus.” Then he noticed the gash he’d put in the bronze, directly over Jody’s right clavicle.
    “I’m sorry, Countess,” Jared said, still a little breathless from his battle. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just that I had to save Lucifer 2. You’d do the same thing for Lord Flood if he was in the story.”
    Jared buffed at the bronze with his sleeve, but the gash was deep and wasn’t going to go away with polishing. “Abby’s going to kill me. I’ll patch you, Countess. Just hang on. Toothpaste. We used it on the wall that time we drank Abby’s mom’s vodka and played cross-country darts in her living room. Hang on a